How to practise typing so it sticks

Two input modes

Continuous mode lets you type the whole sentence in one run, the way real typing works. Chunk mode breaks the sentence into parts and waits for each one before moving on.

Use chunk mode on long sentences: one slip in the middle of a 40-character line, with the whole thing to retype, is the fastest way to give up. Switch to continuous once a sentence is familiar, because that is the thing you are actually training.

Furigana: on, then off

Furigana is the small kana above kanji telling you the reading. Leave it on the first time through a lesson — you cannot type what you cannot read, and guessing teaches nothing.

Once you have been through a lesson, turn it off and do it again. This is where the learning happens: you have to produce the reading yourself instead of reading it off. A lesson you can type with furigana off is a lesson you actually know.

What the numbers tell you

• Accuracy matters more than speed. 60 WPM at 85% accuracy is slower than 40 WPM at 99%, because fixing mistakes costs more than typing correctly.
• WPM in Japanese is not comparable to WPM in English. One kana usually takes two keystrokes, and kanji take a whole reading.
• One lesson's numbers say little; the trend across lessons says more. A bad run may just mean that lesson had more new words.

How long a session should be

Fifteen minutes a day beats two hours a week. This is not a platitude: typing is a motor skill, and motor skills want spaced repetition rather than one long push.

Stop when your accuracy starts dropping. That is fatigue, and typing on through it trains your hands to make mistakes.

Repeating an old lesson is not wasted time. The second day through, you are training recall rather than reading.

Shuffling

Turn shuffle on when you suspect you have memorised the order rather than the words. The sign is typing fluently here but stalling on the same word in a different lesson.